The logic of evolution and the evolution of logic: integrating the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis and later-Wittgensteinian semantics in an evolutionary model that explains conceptual change
Summary
In this thesis, I develop an evolutionary model that aims to explain conceptual change. Attempts at
doing so have generally been called evolutionary epistemologies. These focus on constructing analogies
between the way species evolve, and the way knowledge changes. I claim this approach has its limits,
and I abandon it in favour of one that grounds conceptual change in the evolution of organisms. It can
be seen as an extension of evolutionary theory. This extension is twofold: I first use a framework called
the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis to ground what I call practices in the evolution of organisms, and I
then use the later Ludwig Wittgenstein’s ideas on meaning and language-games to ground concepts in
practices. The result is a model that explains the interdependencies between the evolutions of three
notions: organisms, practices, and concepts. In the last two chapters, I apply the model to change in
knowledge of logic, and of the notion of logical consequence in particular. In this application, I focus on
the logical theories of Aristotle and Chrysippus, and claim that these are grounded in the practices of
giving counterexamples, and of the contradiction, respectively.
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